In a riveting live performance, the Japanese pianist makes her final, loving account of these astonishing masterpieces. Mitsuko Uchida’s performances of Beethoven’s remarkably rich and forward-looking late sonatas, recorded live in October 2025, are generally broader than those of her excellent 2006 studio version of these same works. While there’s no loss of life or liveliness compared to the earlier recording, Uchida here offers more ebb and flow to her playing, slowing down at the ends of phrases as if taking a lingering appreciation of the view before turning the next corner, or just teasingly delaying before reaching a climactic statement. The opening movements of Sonatas Nos. 30 and 31 are given a compellingly fresh, improvisatory quality, as if Uchida were inventing every twist and turn of this music, and she effortlessly reveals the distinct characters of each of these sonatas’ brief scherzos. Yet more striking is the difference between the harmonic warmth and playfulness of Sonata No. 30’s theme and variations finale, performed with fluid grace, and No. 31’s “Adagio ma non troppo”, which appears more than usually mysterious and ominous in Uchida’s long and sustained account, yet with a suitably Bach-like hint in its harmonies which come to the fore in the following fugue. The drama intensifies further with Sonata No. 32’s opening movement, Uchida giving edge to its dramatic, stark-sounding discords. And the way she weighs each chord that opens the “Arietta” variations finale, bringing out their rich resonance, nicely contrasts with the skipping rhythms and syncopations of the lively variation starting at 6:39, Uchida evidently as “light-footed” as ever.